Weak point balancing

[raspberryfh]

This has been a pretty contentious issue for most of my campaign. It feels extremely unbalanced for a character with a single-exploit investment to completely negate another character's heavy armor (which has monetary costs and drawbacks for use). Just automatically done.

Armor becomes a potential risk to survivability because it increases your likelihood of being shot (-2 def for medium armor, -4 for heavy), but you have no ability to avoid the Weak Point exploit's effect. There's no drawback in using Weak Point either, like making the hit less likely to hit. And the imbalance is further exaggerated by the fact that characters with Weak Point are also likely to be high-damage-output in combat as well.

After a lot of discussion with my players, we arrived at this quasi-solution, which still feels very powerful but at least requires more of an investment (two actions, an additional skill required):

During your attack, you may roll perception and then ignore SOAK equal to 0.5 x the result, rounded down. This ability is only usable on attacks benefiting from an Aim action. This ability does not stack with armor piercing ammunition. Unlike the original version, there is no limitation to the number of times per target you may use this ability. (e.g. Fandango aims then attacks B'lonzy who is wearing riot armor with SOAK 7. Fandango uses Weak Point on his attack and rolls a 13. As long as his attack also hits, he will ignore 13/2 = 6.5 -> 6 SOAK. Assuming the attack hits, it will only be SOAKed for 1 point before dealing damage to B'lonzy)

The other alternative was just to make enemies have stupidly high HP, but then if they have high HP and high soak, it almost requires having Weak Point to finish them...

I'm curious if this has come up in other campaigns and what other solutions have been?

 

[easl]

This has been a pretty contentious issue for most of my campaign. It feels extremely unbalanced for a character with a single-exploit investment to completely negate another character's heavy armor...

Just curious, why is one of your PCs constantly shooting/stabbing at your other PCs?

you have no ability to avoid the Weak Point exploit's effect.

You HAVE been playing it per the rules, that it's only usable 'once per enemy,' right? A PC's ability to avoid Weak Point lies in the fact that once an assassin uses it against them, that assassin can never use it against them again.

So I guess my second bit of curiosity lies in how this can be contentious for an entire campaign. Even if your PCs are constantly fighting each other, the assassin PC would've used up his/her 'once per enemy' quota in the first session or two.

 

[raspberryfh]

Sorry, I wasn't clear in the wording. I was using 'character' to include NPCs as well, and my issue was that it unbalanced combat encounters pretty heavily in favor of the PCs. Basically, as written, it allows a single character with little investment into combat to nearly one-shot bosses unless they have boatloads of HP or frustratingly high ranged defenses. The 'once per enemy' rule doesn't matter if it's someone new with like 20 HP taking 4d6+2 (or more, depending on luck) damage to the face each round.

For further clarification, the PC in question has no other combat feats except Aim and a couple defensive feats (Hunker Down, Dive for Cover, Quick Hide). She has 3 points in rifles and a silenced sniper rifle firing hollow-point rounds. Her whole thing is getting somewhere high and hidden then raining death on the NPCs below, often avoiding cover and gaining unaware bonuses (at least for 1-2 shots). Since that is what my player wanted to do with his character, I don't want to negate it at every turn by setting up fights incompatible with his desired playstyle. At the same time, without significant combat investment, he shouldn't be handily outdamaging combat-oriented characters/NPCs and one-shotting bosses. The contention lies in the balancing.

 

[easl]

Sorry, I wasn't clear in the wording. I was using 'character' to include NPCs as well, and my issue was that it unbalanced combat encounters pretty heavily in favor of the PCs.

Ah. Well yes, the system is designed that way. I believe Morrus has stated on multiple occasions that any group of reasonably built PC's should be able to wipe the floor with a similarly sized group of NPCs of the same grade. The system is designed to have a challenging group of NPCs be a grade or so above them, and a challenging boss be 2-3 grades above them. So for example, for grade 5 starting PCs (rolling 5d6, average roll 18, max roll 30) a tough boss NPC should have defenses of 26+ or so. And instead of 18-21 health, they should have 30-40. That would not be unfairly challenging PCs because you think one of their exploits is overpowered, that would be fairly challenging them per the designers intent. That's because there are many tactical ways the PCs can gain bonuses to let them fight, practically, 'above grade'.

***

But I still don't really understand why it causes contention in your group. Were my PC in a group with an assassin PC by my side, I'd be doing everything I could to help them get a big attack dice pool, precisely so that they can use that nice wicked exploit to our best mutual benefit. It's not like my PC won't get experience if someone else kills the boss, so why get upset about who lands the killing blow?

At the same time, without significant combat investment, he shouldn't be handily outdamaging combat-oriented characters/NPCs and one-shotting bosses.

You described 4 exploits dedicated to combat and 3 skill points. And I'm guessing his AGI was 10 out of the gate too, right? That's actually a big investment, a big combat orientation. None of the example PCs are so combat oriented - not even the combat oriented ones. He should be kicking butt.

 

[Morrus]

It’s a few extra points of damage to a creature once ever (compare that to, say, Deadly Strike, which is an extra 1d6 every round). We haven’t found it to be problematic in our games. Being able to one-shot a weak enemy with just 20 HEALTH is fine.

It doesn’t require just an exploit - you have to use an entire career grade to get access to it. That said, the GM is well within rights to disallow it if they don’t like it.